Info on the USSR needed for my setting...

[mmu1]

Strange then that my Serbian friend, and my Croat friend can understand some basic Russian, without ever having studied the language. How close do want them to be to be called close? Dialects? I never suggested it was like American "English" and the Queens English.

I was moderating your statement that appeared to claim that the entire of Eastern Europe would rather have been Nazi than under the control of Soviet Russia. Some countries suffered more than others under the yoke of Soviet Russia. Poland was one of the worst. But ask the Poles today how many Jews live there, compared to in 1939... And ask those Polish Jews who they would rather have in charge: Russians or Nazi's...

Remember it all comes down to people. There are those people in Eastern Europe today, who still believe that they and their countries were better off during the cold war. Even in Poland.

Calling them "close" makes about as much sense as calling all romance languages close. Can French and Spanish people communicate with each other? It's possible to be able to understand some simple pharses in another language and still not be able to communicate. When I moved to the US, I had an easier time communicating with Russians in broken English than in Polish/Russian.

As far as the statement that people that "believe" that their "countries" were better off under Russian control... That is nonsense. These are either scared old people that can't make ends meet or selfish bastards that were for some reason able to exploit the system under the communists. How the country was doing doesn't even enter into consideration, because most of them made their living taking advantage of others. Still, even those sacks of crap never actually wanted the Russians anywhere near the country, they simply did well living in a dictatorship without free trade.

Besides, none of this has anything to do with the sentiments of an overwhelming majority of the population right after the war anyway. These were people who allied with Germans and attacked us in 1939, and then murdered and looted some more in '44 and '45 during the "liberation".